Last December I was in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended a Messiah sing-along with the Yale concert choir and orchestra in their marvellous chapel. This fall I joined a local choral group to perform Handel’s Messiah with another regional choir and a small local orchestra. Even though I drove nearly an hour each

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I am not a dog person. I dislike getting licked and slobbered on. I can’t stand yapping. When I see the toothpick legs of a skinny little Chihuahua everything in me wants to see how easily they will snap. (At such times, I carefully keep my hands to myself.) At least I have

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I once attended a one-day writing workshop. At the end of the day the leader asked us to visualize where we would like to be in ten-years time in our writing careers. He probably suggested a book signing as one possibility. By that time I had

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For several years now, I have kept a Blessing Book by the bed to write down things I’m thankful for. Some of my friends post something they are thankful for on FaceBook every day in November. Many Americans will share something they are thankful for around the table today before diving into their turkey dinner. (I understand the pilgrims probably ate venison, not turkey, that first Thanksgiving; if they ate pumpkin,

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A hard funeral this week—one of the hardest I ever attended. A Spiderman cap graced the tiny coffin. It doesn’t take a very big box to hold a three-year-old. His dad’s auto shop was closed for the day. I heard that the employees of the only floral shop in town were

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In Valerie Comer’s fantasy novel Majai's Fury (reviewed here), Shanh, the Jonah-inspired character sent from his legalistically god-fearing culture to invite a sinful city to believe, calls on his god to protect him. “Azhvah, show your power!” and he does, often in miraculous ways. But then, as with the God of the Bible, there are times when he seems not to. He leaves his followers to suffer while he brings Shahn out of his strict legalism into true relationship. There are so many times

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We recently celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of my home church, Faith Missionary Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. I was a charter member at age thirteen, and FMC has been our largest supporting church over the years so there were lots of old friends to see. Saturday night was a picnic. Most fun for me were

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We’re trying something new today. I have often told you about books I have been reading. This one really had me thinking about my own cultural perspective, and since it was written by a colleague in American Christian Fiction Writers and fellow blogger on International Christian Fiction Writers, I have invited her to answer a few questions, as an “author interview” like we do on a lot of the book sites. There is even a chance to win a free Kindle copy at the end of this post. Let me know if you would like to see more of this sort of thing. Valerie Comer’s new speculative novel, Majai's Fury, is “a fantasy tale of forbidden romance amid clashing religions and cultures.” As the Amazon blurb says:

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Jesus! the name high over all, in hell, or earth, or sky; Angels and men before it fall, and devils fear and fly. Jesus! the name to sinners dear, the name to sinners given; It scatters all their guilty fear, it turns their hell to heaven. Jesus! the prisoner’s fetters breaks and bruises

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You don’t usually see stuffed animals at a funeral, at least not funerals for men in their nineties. But Keith Hunt was unique. He was famous for reading Winnie the Pooh to college students using voices. You know what I mean: Pooh’s slow voice lamenting that he hasn’t any brain, only

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I read John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars a couple years ago. (Another author I got to know through Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing. Even if you have never attended, the booklist on their site is a great place to pick up recommendations.) I haven’t yet gotten

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I picked up My Brother Sam is Dead because it is a Newbery Honor book and available from my library as an audio book. Tim and Sam’s father is Tory in this tale of the American Revolution. He just wants to be allowed to live his life and continue his business

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Me in my office over the garage. Note the tea mug, cozy slippers and gas fireplace. Confession: I cleared the piles of paper off the desk before we took this.

Stephanie Landsem invited me to participate in this “Writing Process Blog Tour.” Stephanie is a friend and critique partner and author of The Well and The Thief, which I have reviewed previously on this blog. I think I am as excited as she is about her coming book, The Tomb. For this relay blog tour, I am to answer four questions. You can see Stephanie's answers on her

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Spring has been slow to come to my part of the country. We received another twelve inches of snow during Holy Week. We’ve been away from home, and I returned to find that the propane tank for the gas fire that heats my office had run out in my absence. (It wasn’t

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Studying pharmacy was supposed to be Ann Brown’s ticket to lots of money and living the good life—not to a remote mission hospital on the continent she swore never to even visit. But God had other plans. From a dysfunctional home in Australia to a youthful lark in London to life in

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This morning I reviewed the book A Muslim and a Christian in Dialogue by Badru D. Kateregga and David W. Shenk on Amazon. (Click the link and scroll down to read the review.) The authors are friends, academic colleagues and team-teachers of a comparative religions course at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya. I posted my thoughts on Amazon. My review was approved and went live. I started to post

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If anyone knows how to set up an anonymous blog on which I can comment anonymously, I would like to be able to post WHILE traveling and not wait until I get home, lest some thief be waiting for me to say, "I'm in Florida!" to rob my house. So let me know if <!--more-->you you do. So far my efforts have all shown up as LeAnne Hardy. :-)

We were in Florida last week for the purpose

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I’m considering writing a new book: The Gospel According to George. This would be a short book aimed at music lovers from non-Christian or post-Christian cultures who enjoy Handel’s oratorio The Messiah, but have no idea what it is about. “Comfort ye. Comfort ye my people,” Handel begins, quoting Isaiah chapter 40. But

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Table Mountain, near Cape Town where Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years.

Back in the 1980s when my family lived in Mozambique, then a “front-line state” against apartheid South Africa, I thought the South African government was crazy not to release their long-time political prisoner, a fellow named Nelson Mandela. “Let the ANC tear itself apart with infighting,” I thought. I didn’t know Nelson Mandela. His eventual release

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December 1 is World AIDS Day, a time to remember the 34 million people in the world today living with HIV. Half a million have died in the US alone. More than two thirds of those living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa where I have lived for many years. For every one person with the virus in the blood steam, weakening the immune system, countless others are affected—parents, children,

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Several years ago I started the practice of writing down something I’m thankful for every day. It has to be something specific to the past twenty-four hours. I don’t allow myself to repeat the generic friends, family and food. Which friend and why? What about my family? Or what food brought me

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It's here! The beautiful cover designed by Katy Popa with a painting by Kathy Haasdyk, illustrator of Our Gran. Keeping Secrets will be released December 1, World AIDS Day. You can see the trailer now on YouTube. Keeping Secrets is not a book for pre-teens. Because of content involved with HIV, parents will want to read it themselves before giving it to readers under thirteen or fourteen. But then I always try

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When we moved to England in 1997, my dear friend Liz gave me lots of cuttings to start houseplants that brightened our new home. A bit of this and a snip of that. She loved the excuse to “play plants,” as she called it. Well, I love to “play photos,” and a new book is the perfect excuse. My slide show of

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I've had a great time this past year working with Rob Skead on several YA manuscripts. (Not this one.) When he came up with this great idea for using his new digital picture book to raise funds for Feed America, I had to let you know. Here's what Rob has to say about his new book: I want to give a big thank you to LeAnne for inviting me to be her guest blogger. She is one of the “things” I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving. If it were not for

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One day on our recent visit to Split, Croatia, we took a city bus to the late Roman city of Salona.

Salona, a city of 70,000 people, was the birthplace of the future Emperor Diocletian in the fourth century. You can see the modern city of Silon in the background.

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